6 Working with KPI Overviews and Alert Lists

This chapter describes the use of the KPI overview facility. It explains how you can control the appearance of reported KPIs, and drill-down through them for more information about their underlying status and generated alerts. The use of KPI correlation and alert lists is also explained. Note that you must have at least Overview access level permission to view this tab. User access level permissions are described in Section 14.2, "Understanding User Roles and Permissions".

6.1 KPI Overviews

The KPIs visible to you within the KPI overview facility depend on your authorized information scope (as described in Section 14.7, "Managing the Scope of Authorized Data Within Modules"). You can review the status of your authorized KPIs by clicking the KPI overview tab. This provides a snapshot of them in a format that is both intuitive and insightful. An example is shown in Figure 6-1.

The overview provides a ready summary of the current status of the KPIs within each category. If you have Full access level permission, you can configure these categories to reflect your organization's specific requirements, with each category containing relevant performance indicators. For example, you could have separate categories for such things as availability issues, performance, visitor traffic, and other specific aspects of your organization's operations. You can also click New KPI within the toolbar to create additional KPIs. The procedure for creating KPIs is described in Section 7.2, "Defining KPIs and SLAs".

6.1.1 Viewing KPI Overviews

To see the defined categories, select the KPI Overview tab, and then Overview. The Overview category is a special viewing category that provides the highest level view of your authorized KPIs. It provides both an instant summary of all the other KPI categories, and access to their individual KPIs by drilling-down through the displayed information.

To view a specific KPI category, click the required category. Alternatively, right click it, and select either Open or Open in a new window from the context menu. This last option is especially useful for viewing the graphs in a full-screen display, or for viewing several KPI categories at the same time through resized and aligned windows.

6.1.2 Presentation Style

Two types of KPI overview presentation are available: meters and graphs. Figure 6-1 is an example of a meter overview. This style provides an analog meter view of the selected KPIs. For a more detailed representation, with information about the KPI over the last 90 minutes, a graph style is available. An example is shown in Figure 6-2.

Note that in this presentation, the vertical axis is automatically scaled to an appropriate range in order to provide optimal viewing. To select your preferred presentation style, select the Presentation style option from the KPI overview menu, and the preferred style.

6.1.3 Zooming In and Out

Within the graph presentation style, you can zoom in and out to view the displayed graphs over shorter or longer periods of time. Depending on the historical information that is available, you can zoom out to hourly and daily levels. Note that the graph style automatically changes from a bar chart to a line chart. An example is shown in Figure 6-3.

6.1.4 KPIs and Targets

You can select the Include KPIs without targets option from the KPIoverview menu to include or exclude KPIs without defined targets from the currently displayed category. Note that any targets that have been set for a KPI are shown in the graph presentation, with the minimum target running from the 0-reference line up to the set minimum target, and the maximum target running from the top of the KPI graph down to the set maximum target. An example is shown in Figure 6-3.

In addition, the following color scheme is used within graphs to provide information about targets:

Blue: the KPI does not have any set targets.

Green: the KPI was within a set target for the currently selected period.

Red: the KPI was outside its set target for the currently selected period.

6.1.5 Working with Incomplete Data

Data gathered during monitoring is first written to log files stored on the Collector system. These files are then processed by the Reporter system to track KPIs. If, for any reason, one or more of these log files arrive too late for the Reporter system to process, the KPI overview indicates that the KPI is based on incomplete data. An example is shown in Figure 6-5.

The periods that are based on incomplete data are indicated with a dotted border. In addition, mouse over text provides information about the level of missing data.

6.1.6 Drilling-Down Through Overviews

An overview is a summary of the KPIs within a category, and within each overview, you can drill-down into further information about the underlying KPIs by right clicking the KPI title and using the menu shown in Figure 6-6.

Information about specific alerts is available by clicking the appropriate alert. This provides information such as the persons notified in the alert and notification methods. It is based on the underlying alert profile, described in Section 7.5, "Defining Alert Schedules".

6.2 Comparing KPI Behavior

The KPI correlation facility allows you to compare the behavior of a selected KPI over a given period with other KPIs and performance metrics during that same period. In this way, you can gain insight into performance issues, identify any related symptoms, and their possible causes. Note that the specific KPIs included in the comparison depend on the access type definitions of the currently defined KPIs, and the applications, suites, and services which you are authorized to view as part of your user profile.

To use this facility, select a KPI from the Correlation structure, or select a KPI from the Overview structure and select Correlate from the context menu shown in Figure 6-6. A screen similar to the one shown in Figure 6-8 appears.

Use the Backward and Forward controls to change the displayed history, and then the graph overlay controls to specify the required period. This can range between 1 to 6 hours. Click Apply range to view the matched metrics.

The KPIs tab lists all currently defined KPIs whose behavior for the specified period matches that of the selected KPI. The other tabs (such as All pages and Slow URLs) list the metrics within their associated Data Browser groups that match the KPI's behavior for the selected period. The availability of these tabs depends on the selected KPI, and the installed suite packages. If the KPI's underlying metric is available in a Data Browser group (for example, Failed pages), than that group is available as a tab in the KPI correlation panel.

The period you specify is preserved when you select a new KPI. To specify a new period, click Reset period selection, use the time selection controls described above to specify the new required period, and click a tab to view the matches found.

As explained in Section 6.1.5, "Working with Incomplete Data", reported periods that are based on incomplete data are shown with a dotted border. However, unlike KPI overviews, mouse over text indicating the level of missing data is not available.

Drilling-Down Into Found Matches

As explained earlier, matches found for the selected KPI are reported in the appropriate Data Browser group tabs. Each match found must have a correlation of at least 90% for it to be reported. An example is shown in Figure 6-9.

You can click the Browse icon to the right of the matched metric to open the Data Browser (described in Chapter 3, "Working With the Data Browser") to explore the underlying data. If no correlations are found for a metric, this is also reported.

6.3 Working With Alert Lists

You can select KPIoverview and then Alerts to view a complete list of all the alerts generated when KPIs moved outside their required ranges. For example, the number of visitors to your Home page fell to less than 100 per hour. An example is shown in Figure 6-10.

6.3.2 Viewing Alerts

This shows that the alert concerns the number of page views per minute for the Dutch market. The KPI has a range of 20 - 100 page views per minute, but this has fallen to 5. The Text message tab lists the users who were notified and the contact information used. Following notification, the appropriate staff members can start to research possible causes for the drop in client traffic.